Thursday, February 07, 2008

The Discovery Institute is behind an attempt to gather signatures and push state legislation to defend "the rights of teachers and students to study the full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution." "The full range of scientific views on Darwinian evolution" is apparently the new code phrase for creationist misinformation and nonsense.

The proposed legislation prohibits termination, discipline, denial of tenure or other discrimination against K-12 teachers who lie to their students by teaching them creationist nonsense.

30 comments:

What a price is paid for those working in science ignoring the limits of its methods and the scope of its actions. Ignoring that science only studies the physical universe that can be observed, quantified and analyzed and nothing else is a whole big enough for the "Discovery Institute" to drive a fleet of tractor trailers through.

It's a shame but I've not noticed the would be 'science' side of it coming down off of its romantic Olympus to say that the religious motives of those who want to put "ID" in public school science class rooms are actually asking them to go past where science can look. That, unfortunately, is too big a price for the materialist fundamentalists to pay to protect the integrity of science, which is clearly not their real concern.

Darwin Day is staffed by just such ideological, would be "defenders of science".

"It's a shame but I've not noticed the would be 'science' side of it coming down off of its romantic Olympus to say that the religious motives of those who want to put "ID" in public school science class rooms are actually asking them to go past where science can look."

yes, I never ever see scientists saying that the problem of ID is that it cannot be investigated with methodological naturalism.

I never ever see scientists saying that the problem of ID is that it cannot be investigated with methodological naturalism.

To start, naturalism is an ideology, science is a collection of procedures. It is part of the current fad of naturalism to pretend that it is an essential foundation of science when it actually is a result of exactly the kind of disregard of the limits of science I mentioned earlier.

Intelligent design is a lot like naturalism, it's a legitimate belief as long as it doesn't try to impose itself on science classrooms in public schools. Its entry into scientific publications is ill advised and, to the extent that it is accepted as science, it is harmful to science.

It is fortunate that few religious scientists give in to the temptation to mix their personal belief in with science, unfortunate that so many irreligious scientists can't master the distinction. And that's not even getting to the level of carelessness found on the materialist blogs.

Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. This revolution entailed the rejection of the appeal to authority, and by extension, revelation, in favor of empirical evidence. Since that time period, science has been a discipline in which testability, rather than any ecclesiastical authority or philosophical coherence, has been the measure of a scientific idea's worth. In deliberately omitting theological or "ultimate" explanations for the existence or characteristics of the natural world, science does not consider issues of "meaning" and "purpose" in the world. While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science. This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as "methodological naturalism" and is sometimes known as the scientific method. Methodological naturalism is a "ground rule" of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify.

-- Judge Jones, apparently writing like Shirley Maclain because he is a member of a Kurtz Kult Klown.

science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.

Pretty much what I said.

This self-imposed convention of science, which limits inquiry to testable, natural explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as "methodological naturalism" and is sometimes known as the scientific method.

You'll notice, if you're a more careful reader than most of the blog materialists, Hume, that I addressed only "naturalism". If Jones made a distinction between the necessity of science only dealing with the physical universe and considers the methods used to do that with a reasonable degree of objective reliability "methodological naturalism" it's still pretty much what I said but notice he calls it a "ground rule" for practicing science. That would make it an entirely different thing from the kind of "naturalism" that holds it's a fact that only the material universe as can be known through science exists and that any other thing, the supernatural, for example is a delusion. That, Hume, is an ideology that isn't a foundation of science or even a ground rule. That is one of the most common delusions practiced by materialists today.

Unfortunately, asserting that science can deal with things such as the supernatural opens the door for the IDers to assert that it can look for evidence of a "designer". I'd call that bad science and bad religion, though I'm not wasting my time on explaining the latter assertion tonight. All you've got to give up is the pretense that science can deal with what it plainly cannot and you diminish the size of that hole, though it's going to take a long time to close one that's been opened up for so long now.

You don't get it. The point is that scientists have argued against ID on the very grounds that you've asserted that they don't because they are "materialist fundamentalists". The Judge Jones quote - which you've agreed with - cites the testimony of -surprise- scientists saying that science can say nothing about non-empirical claims.

As usual, you're beating up on a straw-man of your own creation. Peruse through the secular web library and you'll find plenty of articles making the distinction between metaphysical and methodological naturalism.

Hume's Ghost, I didn't say that every last scientist was clueless about the distinction between materialist fundamentalism and the necessary limits of science, just that too many of them are clueless. Clearly the Dover case held some lessons in practical application of those principles among the general population.

You go on just about any neo-atheist blog or any blog where neo-atheists post comments and try to make the distinction and you'll find out just how clueless my pointing this out is. Try doing it incognito at PZ's blog, for example, without identifying yourself as an atheist and watch what happens if you refuse to be cowed by the initial response.

I've resisted the temptation as long as I could (and I'm surprised, Hume's Ghost, that you've ceased ignoring Mr. McCarthy)...

Mr. McCarthy, can you stop speaking in vague generalities and broad strokes for one minute and make a specific reference to or direct quotation from an acknowledged scientist claiming that the tools of science are appropriate for things that are outside the realms of logic and/or empiricism?

I submit that you cannot.

Please note that I'm not talking about random morons who post comments on blogs, but genuine professional scientists/philosophers/ epistemologists.

You want to watch that Einzige, next thing you know you'll be resisting other temptations. It's a slippery slope to theism.

make a specific reference to or direct quotation from an acknowledged scientist claiming that the tools of science are appropriate for things that are outside the realms of logic and/or empiricism?

"Did Jesus have a human father, or was his mother a virgin at the time of his birth? Whether or not there is enough surviving evidence to decide it, this is still a strictly scientific question." Richard Dawkins, quoted by H. Allen Orr in the New York Review of Books, Jan.11, 2007.

If what Dawkins means is: "The claims of virgin birth and non-human parentage are, in general, ones that can be subjected to empirical analysis--even though the specific question of Jesus of Nazareth is no longer decidable." ...then, yes, I'd agree with him.

I agree with the statement even without such qualification. It's an empirical claim: there was a man who was born of a virgin.

We have mountains of empirical evidence demonstrating that it a virgin birth is impossible, yet we zero contrary evidence except the lack of direct evidence of Jesus's birth which is supposed to somehow grant it somekind of exempt status from what we know about reality and make it something we remain agnostic about? Which would mean we have to entertain the possibility that a human can be born without sperm fertilizing an egg.

I think its poorly worded, but I think its poorly worded in that its too weak a statement. Science can't test the evidence to refute the claim, but it can still inform our evaluation of it.

That's the sense that I would guess Dawkins means it, though I don't at the moment have a copy at hand to make sure.

To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists' DNA out of hand: "Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium." Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.

Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle - and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn't. It is a fact, one way or the other, and in our state of uncertainty we can put a probability on it - an estimate that may change as more information comes in. Humanity's best estimate of the probability of divine creation dropped steeply in 1859 when The Origin of Species was published, and it has declined steadily during the subsequent decades, as evolution consolidated itself from plausible theory in the nineteenth century to established fact today

The problem I see is that the Christians engage in special pleading when it comes to Christ--in fact they insist on it, since his birth could hardly be considered miraculous if virgin births were a regular occurrence.

That's what moves it beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. You can marshal all sorts of scientific facts against the claim. All the contrary evidence and argument is helpless against the person who says, "But Jesus was a singular event. God bent the rules in his case."

Massimos Pigliucci criticized Dawkins for being scientistic in blurring the distinction between philosophical and scientific arguments.

When you come to the special pleading that would seem like a demarcation point. To me, though, it makes as much sense to say that Socrates could fly like Superman and shoot laser beams out of his eyes and then say science can say nothing about that claim. A response is going to draw on science and philosophy, with it being obvious that we can't directly investigate Socrates to see if its true or not.

I think Olvlz would have had a better candidate with the part where Dawkins says souls surviving death and what not is theory, which it is not. At least, if you're using the scientific definition of "theory."

"Accepting, then, that the God Hypothesis is a proper scientific hypothesis whose truth or falsehood is hidden from us only by lack of evidence, what should be our best estimate of the probability that God exists, given the evidence now available? Pretty low I think, and here's why."

I didn't get a hold of God Delusion yet, but I think that bit there is much more on the mark regarding Olvzl's criticism. Dawkins is making the argument that if we can explain something naturally the probability of God's existence goes down, but that doesn't make "God's existence" a scientific hypothesis. This is just careless.

Well, to me at least, the multiple comments from the same person (me) in the Recent Comments thing on the left of the page looks rather obnoxious.

I checked The God Delusion, and it's pretty much the same thing. Dawkins is saying that were Jesus alive today and it claimed that he was immaculately conceived that would be a matter of scientific inquiry. He was not saying that we can currently scientifically test the claim.